


Slow Growth

by poeticname



Category: GoGo Sentai Boukenger
Genre: Developing Friendships, Gardening, Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-13 23:26:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21005900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poeticname/pseuds/poeticname
Summary: While trying to have fun on her day off, Natsuki runs into a team member she rarely sees off-duty.





	Slow Growth

**Author's Note:**

> If these two have a focus episode together I haven’t seen it so my assumed dynamic here might be off, however: a friend sent me the phrase “boukensilver gardening” and I couldn’t resist writing this anyways.

Natsuki often struggles to come up with things to do when she has free time and no company.

She's been told that this isn’t a failing and she shouldn’t worry about it many times over. Masumi tells her that it makes sense an amnesiac would struggle with it since she forgot so many other things, and Sakura assures her that there's usually someone in the base no matter what so it will be rare for her to be alone anyways, and Natsuki goes on her merry way to thinking about other things.

Today, though, nobody was in the base and all Natsuki could think to do was go out to the park.

She'll admit that it has been nice for most of the morning. She looked at flowers real closely, watched some cute ducks until they flew away, bought some ice cream, and generally took a good walk around the park in the sun. Those are all fun things!

But her texts have gone unanswered, nobody in the park seemed receptive to chatting when she tried to introduce herself, and though she tried as hard as she possibly could to have fun by herself, Natsuki has ended up bored.

She’s settled down at the roots of a tree, thinking the position might help her feel like she’s on a cool wilderness adventure or something, but mostly it's just uncomfortable. 

She sighs, stretching her legs out as she does and starts to wonder if maybe she could climb the tree. It would certainly kill time, and maybe she could get a vantage point on something interesting. On the other hand, if she hurts herself doing something that isn't for a mission that wouldn’t be fun at all. Maybe she could head back over to the food stalls? Masumi often tells her not to eat more than one big snack between meals but he's not here so he can't stop her.

Natsuki imagines texting him about it, something like "come find me or i'm gonna eat AAAALL this!" with a picture of a big spread of snacks on a picnic table, and giggles enough at the face she thinks he'll make that she gets up, resolving to go through with that plan until she gets back to the park's paved path and notices a familiar head of long, unruly hair ahead of her.

Knowing she sometimes over-recognizes, Natsuki quietly makes her way toward the man to confirm his identity, doing her best mission-standard sneaking, biding her time until she can get a look at him from the side and—

— sure enough, it's Eiji.

"Hiya, Ei-chan!"

Eiji immediately trips over his own feet in surprise, though he rights himself quickly and turns around to gape at Natsuki as she beams.

Though this park is fairly close to the SGS base and he probably shouldn’t be this surprised, Eiji looks shocked, "When did you get here?"

"Three hours ago," Natsuki says, having been painfully aware of how much time was passing all afternoon. "I've run out of things to do, what are you up to?"

Belatedly, she realizes that she was unsure Eiji was himself because he's not wearing his SGS jacket or his long priest-like one. Instead, he's wearing a very dirty pair of boots, some jeans, and a t-shirt that's definitely seen better days.

"What's with the farmer outfit, also?"

Eiji opens his mouth, then closes it.

"Were you going for a different look with it?"

At that, he lets out a short bark of a laugh, "No, no, farmer's close enough."

"That's cool," Natsuki says, still unclear on why he's wearing such beat-up things when she's sure his shiny jacket's hanging up in perfect shape at home. "I didn't know you had the day off too! I thought you were still doing your usual thing outside the base."

"I'm not exactly off work," Eiji frowns at the very thought of it. "The Scion of Takaoka never rests, if there's any sign of the Ashu I must hunt them, but... It's been a quiet few days, I thought I'd take a break."

"Then what are you doing right now?"

This makes Eiji look Natsuki in the eye for a solid few seconds. Natsuki makes sure to stare right back, trying to communicate wordlessly that she’s really, seriously curious.

After a few seconds Eiji looks away, clicks his tongue, looks back at Natsuki, then sighs as he turns in the direction he was headed before. 

"I'll show you, come on."

Excited both to know what the ever-mysterious Eiji does in his time off and to have something to do, Natsuki follows him along the path happily, even as Eiji mutters something like "knew this was too close to hq" at the beginning and doesn't talk otherwise.

He leads Natsuki to a fenced and gated garden she'd noticed earlier, but walked by since the inside was so obscured by vines that Natsuki thought it might be overgrown and people who weren’t going to fix it wouldn’t be welcome. Eiji lifts the latch on the gate without any hesitation though, and Natsuki follows him in.

"Oh, wow!"

The vines were hiding what is to Natsuki’s untrained eye an impressively crowded garden with a large variety of vegetables and flowers growing in it, all divided into neat little squares with handmade signs sticking out of them. She can recognize it’s not kept up to the highest standard of prettiness, but that hardly matters when there’s so much to look at and most of it’s blooming.

Eiji's paused beside Natsuki, looking a little smug as she turns to him and asks, "Ei-chan, what is this?"

"Community garden," Eiji answers. “The sign explaining that is a little hard to see, but anyone can come work on it."

Before Natsuki can ask anything more, Eiji's striding forward, further into the garden, and he leads her to a square very close to the back fence, containing one row of tomato plants and one row of something that hasn't grown quite enough for Natsuki to recognize.

"This plot," he points proudly at a wooden stake between the two rows with "Takaoka" messily written on it, "is mine." 

"Oh my gosh, how long have you been working on it?"

"Not that long," he says, grinning at Natsuki as she squats to look at the tomatoes better. "Looks pretty good already, right?"

The tomatoes on the vines are fairly small, but most of them are quite red, and Natsuki really wants to eat some, "You mean they're not good to eat?"

"Some of them are, but don't reach for them quite yet."

Natsuki, who was leaning forward to do just that, pouts up at him, and Eiji smiles down at her in a less smug way than before.

"Let me do what I came here to get done first."

Natsuki nods and settles in against the fence as Eiji stretches a little, clearly showing off, then bends down and gets to work.

He tells Natsuki all about what he's doing as he does it, from kneeling down and checking the soil to see if he needs to water them, to getting the water they do in fact need, to pointing out the tomatoes he's getting rid of because bugs got to them, to plucking a couple weeds out of someone else’s plot as a favour, and no matter how boring it probably should be, Natsuki finds herself sitting there quietly, nodding intently and listening to every word.

By the time he's finished Eiji is sweaty and his hands and feet are absolutely caked in soil, but he looks pleased with himself in a subdued, content way that Natsuki's not sure she's seen from him before. 

He sits down on the ground beside her, against the vines, and lets out a large breath of relief, closing his eyes as his head hits the fence and makes it jiggle. Natsuki wishes she had a water bottle to offer him, but she forgot hers at home.

"I can see why you need the farmer outfit now."

Eiji laughs at that, "Yeah, don't always need it but I wasn't able to come around for a couple weeks. Figured other people would keep it watered, I've been lucky with that so far, but knew there'd be other things that need to be done today."

Natsuki thinks on that for a second, knowing Eiji hasn't been back to base for a couple weeks either.

"Did you plant these when you joined the Boukengers?"

Eiji sighs again, silent for a couple of seconds after it.

Natsuki prods him, ”I can always text Masumi a picture of you from today, and he can put a funny straw hat on it."

"Don't do that," Eiji says, without much energy in it, and sighs again, "and don't repeat what I'm about to tell you, but yeah, I planted this when I realized I’d be coming back pretty often.”

Natsuki nods, solemnly, as Eiji opens his eyes and starts to look a little more serious.

"I'd always kinda wanted to start a garden, but it wouldn’t have felt great to use the one in my old house and I never stayed anywhere else long enough. So when I was brought on I thought I might as well make the best of having a real home base.”

Natsuki wants to tell him that's sweet, but Eiji so clearly doesn't want to hear it that she lets the conversation die for a few seconds as he gets up to his feet, stretching again.

"Want a tomato? Some of the smaller ones are actually ready."

Natsuki follows him to his feet, back to excitement as he bends down to his tomatoes again, "Really? For me?"

"It's a bribe," Eiji tells her, returning to a bit of smugness as he emerges from the plants, two tomatoes in hand. "If you take it, you can't tell anyone about seeing me today."

Natsuki pouts, hiding her hands behind her back when he holds out the tomato to her, "Why not?"

"It's my alone time, normally," Eiji holds the tomato up to her face, reminding Natsuki of how badly she wanted a snack. "Didn't mind it today, but if the whole team comes..."

"Fine, fine, I'll let you have your secret garden," Natsuki says, holding out her hands for the tomato. Eiji puts it in her hand carefully, but solidly.

He faces her, grinning again, holding up his own tomato. "Ready?"

Natsuki nods.

Both of them, in sync, take a bite out of their tomatoes.

Natsuki doesn't know what she was expecting, but it's far too much at once and also extremely slimy, she has to really force herself to chew it slowly for a couple seconds to keep from spitting it out.

Eiji, meanwhile, laughs at her sour face as he off-handedly takes a second bite, "As I thought, raw tomatoes are for the advanced palate."

Natsuki frowns at him, "How is eating gross textures advanced?"

"A true vegetable lover would know."

"That doesn't mean anything Ei-chan!"

He laughs again, holding out his hand, "I'll take it if you don't want it."

"No, it's my bribe," Natsuki holds it away from him and he continues to grin.

"Well, if you want one better for your tastes, come again when the bell peppers are ready."

Natsuki blinks.

"I thought you didn't want anyone around your garden?"

Eiji starts to walk towards the gate of the garden, forcing her to look at his back as he leisurely takes another bad-to-look-at bite of raw tomato.

"Today wasn't terrible, I'll admit you if you get bored again."

"Am I allowed to help with it if you’re too busy to come by?"

Eiji looks back at her, scrutinizing. Natsuki gives him her best smile.

"If I give you some instructions, then yeah."

Excited at the potential there, Natsuki runs forward to walk beside Eiji, “Can I plant stuff of my own, too? Other people have flowers, that could be nice for yours too.”

Eiji pauses for a moment, looking down at Natsuki seriously enough that she stops too.

He studies Natsuki for a few seconds, though she doesn’t really understand why. Strangers sometimes do this if they think she’s joking, but Eiji should know by now that Natsuki’s always honest with her team members. She’ll lie for missions, and she’ll play jokes, but there’s no reason to joke around about something Eiji seems to love.

Finally, he looks away, though Natsuki thinks she saw him smiling for a second.

“I’ll think about it.”

Natsuki follows Eiji out of the garden, pleased with herself for seemingly passing that last test, already picturing an overflowing garden plot with enough vegetables and flowers to surprise everyone back home.


End file.
